One of my very favorite Christmas traditions is gathering as a family on Christmas Eve and reading the story of Christ’s birth. Growing up, my dad always read from the book of Luke in the Bible. A few years ago I was asked to put together a church Christmas program, and it struck me that while there are plenty of prophesies of Christ’s birth in the Book of Mormon, most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints mimic the programs of other Christian faiths who believe the Bible to be the only word of God. Why do we do this? Directly under the cover title of…

Feel free to skip to #15 for THE WORST ONE, hahaha. Otherwise, here are rejections 11-15 for your voyeuristic viewing pleasure. #11 Dear Christine Tyler, Thank you for sending [poem] to [venue] for consideration. We appreciated the chance to consider your poetry, but unfortunately this isn’t for us. We know that poetry comes from deeply personal and emotionally significant places, and we appreciate the care and effort that goes into writing and submitting. We relish the chance to read each submission we receive. Even though this poetry wasn’t right for us, we’re honored that you took the time to send it our way, and we wish you all the best.…

I’m currently commissioning some art from the unfathomably talented Ejiwa “Edge” Ebenebe, and she’s sent me four thumbnails to choose from! It’s a portrait of my dryad character, and these are the four composition options. Use the poll below to vote and help me decide! Click on your favorite thumbnail and then submit your choice. If you have some detailed opinions, I’d love to hear about them in the comments section. Such as, “do you like the overall composition better in one picture, but you like the facial features better in another? Do you like the angle of the face in one but the amount of shoulders showing in another?”…

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November is officially OVER and that means NaNoWriMo has come to a close. It also means I just completed my last “foundations” class for aerial fabrics. Gotta say, I’m more happy about one of those things ending than the other, ahhhhhhh. For those of you who have been following along, you know that “Space Circus” was the project I was working on for NaNoWriMo this year, and if you know that much, you also probably saw this coming: I didn’t get it written. Like, at all. I busted out about ten thousand words in the first few days of November and then got frustrated because they’re not just not good,…

At this point I’m not really sure why I’m labeling these posts as “NaNoWriMo” anything, because this has definitely been my worst NaNoWriMo ever. Wait, let me check the stats on that. Uhhh yeah. It looks like I got to 30k back in 2012. And this is what this year looks like: Here’s a graph in case my level of failure isn’t immediately apparent to you: I’m not all that bummed out about it. As I mentioned in my previous posts, I had a number of projects going at the same time and getting my daily word count in for the Space Circus ended up at the bottom of my…

The second full week of NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and I have a couple confessions to make. 1) I am waaay behind on my NaNoWriMo project. 2) I’m actually kind of okay with that. Here’s what’s been going on. I recently got an idea for an entirely new flash fiction piece about 1700 words long, and have spent the last few weeks drafting it, revising it, and polishing it up. It takes place in a fantasy-version of Iceland a long, long time ago. I’m submitting it for the first time today, so wish me luck! I’ve been trying to keep up with The Island Book as well, adding 600…

Once a year, the writers of the world rally together in attempt to each write fifty-thousand words in one month. It’s called NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. It’s an exercise in both writing prolifically, but also in camaraderie. Along the way, we’re treated to pep talks from amazing authors, and everyone who reaches 50k “wins.” I made my first NaNoWriMo attempt in 2012, learned a few lessons, and successfully reached 50k when I tried again in 2013. I didn’t come back to it because, well, it’s a time-suck and the manuscript I wrote in 2013 was too rushed to create any usable material. I felt like NaNoWriMo was a…

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Click the following links to read… My First Rejection Letter My Second Rejection Letter My Third Rejection Letter My Fourth Rejection Letter My Fifth Rejection Letter I’ve hit a major milestone in my writing…I’ve received five more rejections, and finally got my tenth! And I must say, these last ones led to some special moments. My seven year old, Bubs, was in the room when I got one of them and I thought he might be interested in seeing it. I showed him my “rejection binder” where I print them all out so I can flip through them. “Wow! That’s a lot of rejections!” he said when he looked at it.…

This is the (very long) third installment to my “Best Writing Advice” series. Click here for My Best Writing Advice Part 1: “Riding” Like a Professional Click here for My Best Writing Advice Part 2: The Three Keys to a Professional Routine Without further ado, Part 3: In August of 2017, I had a little bit of a meltdown. I had finished the novel I’d been working on since my childhood, and had decided to shelve it. While I’d planned for the book to be the first in a series, I realized it would work much better as a sequel, and the new “first book” had yet to be written.…

Last week I drew out a very long analogy to demonstrate why having a professional writing routine before publication is, in my opinion, one of the most important skills you can develop as an unpublished author. I claimed that, “Having a predictable, productive, and sustainable approach to your writing is just as important as writing well.” Now, if I’m going to claim that predictability, productivity and sustainability are the three keys of professional writing, I should probably define what I mean by those terms. Key 1. PREDICTABILITY I work analogous to a lot of women who, on top of writing, carry the majority of the domestic duties in their home, such as parenting,…